Bitter Blue
by sxcond
Summary: In the end, he could only wonder why he felt so terribly bitter and blue all the livelong day. Written for QLFC Round 6.


Falmouth Falcons

CHASER 1: Overall Prompt: Write about a light character committing the sin of GREED

Prompts:

1\. (object) swear jar

2\. (dialogue) "I only came because I was told there was going to be cake."

5\. (word) curfew

Words: 2980

* * *

At fourteen years old, Gregory McDougall was a boy with skinny bird legs and frequently skinned knees. He enjoyed butterfly-catching, which you had to want to be successful at to succeed with. And Gregory wanted to be the best at what his mother had been known for before she died, so he daydreamed of being so all day.

This gave him a perpetually vacant and longing look on his face. In an England at war, where everyone's faces reflected the situation on the battlefield, such a leisurely mien was unforgivable; especially to the boys who had dear brothers away, fighting for Britain in the Second Boer War. This was why Gregory was currently hiding in the hedges of the Dumbledore residence; the one place the neighbourhood boys wouldn't dare go.

"Spread out," commanded Frederick Browne with his hands on his hips. His brother was a sergeant in the military, and Frederick enjoyed imitating him. "He can't have gotten far with those legs of his."

"Of course!" Joseph Smith replied.

"Yes, sir!" Timmy Browne saluted, already familiar with how his brother ticked.

Frederick nodded to Timmy. "Keep it up, cadet, and you'll be promoted in no time. Now, scram!"

There was the fading sound of pitter-patter footsteps on the pavement. Gregory's breath hitched as a silhouette passed the hedge he was hiding behind, and he exhaled once it was gone.

"Hello."

"Bloody—"

"Shh," the girl who greeted him whispered. Her smooth hands were clasped over his mouth. "He'll hear you."

"Frederick?" Gregory whispered back, as flushed as the roses that hung onto the hedge behind him. He averted his gaze from her unexpectedly lovely face and glanced closer at the roses. He suddenly felt a wave of Deja Vu.

"No, not Frederick. My brother," the girl clarified. She looked hesitant now. "Do you mean Frederick Browne, perhaps?"

"Yeah, that's the bugger."

"You and he are... friends?"

"Like hell."

The girl stood up and smoothed her blue skirt—it was the colour of a Common Blue, Gregory noted—and his spirits lifted somehow. "Well, I suppose anyone not friends with him is certainly a friend of mine," she said and grabbed his wrists, heaving him up.

"I'm Ariana Dumbledore," she said, sounding friendly but wary. She tilted her head and her blonde hair shimmered in the sunlight; it was now the colour of a Clouded Yellow. "And who are you?"

"Gregory McDougall," he replied and surreptitiously wiped his hands on his pants. "Very nice to meet you."

"Would you like to come in for tea?"

* * *

A sugar cube clinked against a cup.

Gregory had a vague idea that something was not quite right with the Dumbledores' kitchen. But the reason kept fluttering, just out of his grasp, like one of those elusive, quicksilver Pygmy Blues.

"More tea?" Ariana questioned faux-graciously. She was stirring her tea with excessive vigour that belied either excitement or nervousness.

"Yes, please." Gregory felt mildly guilty about letting a girl totter around and pour him tea, but he was tired and sore from his escape from Frederick's gang. Ariana seemed quite pleased to play the hostess, too, so he let it be.

He didn't know what to think of her. She was neither ugly, warty, nor a witch like the rumours had said.

Overall, she was a sweet girl whose eyes were just a little sad and grasping.

What she was greedy for, he did not know. But he doubted it was material. She seemed too ethereal for such worldly vices.

"If you don't mind me asking, why was Frederick chasing you?"

"Dunno." Gregory yawned and stretched in his seat, like a cat under the afternoon sun. "He's completely bonkers."

"Oh." Her British accent and high, childish voice made the word sound akin to the chirp of a bird.

There was a pregnant pause.

"Fine," Gregory drawled. "Arsehole found me catching butterflies and went barmy, deciding to heckle an innocent sod."

"Butterflies? How fun!" Ariana exclaimed, ignoring his language. Her tea splashed over the rim as she abruptly leaned over the delicate, round table. "Do you do that often? What sort of butterflies do you catch? I've never tried to catch any before—my mother used to say that I'm too poor in health, you see. I've seen them in books, but it's not _enough_.

" _I want more_ ," she emphasised then, finally taking a breath.

"Well—yes—whatever butterflies I can find in the meadow," Gregory replied, bewildered. His breath caught—her eyes were so brilliant, perhaps like stardust or an Adonis Blue—as he continued, "I—I suppose."

"Do you reckon I could come the next time you go butterfly-catching?" Ariana asked with yearning in her voice.

"Yes." What else could he say?

"Wonderful!" she exclaimed, eyes twinkling like the stars.

* * *

They snuck out at dawn a week after.

"Albus doesn't keep a good watch on me, like mother and Aberforth did," Ariana had confided to him over another tea session. "And he wakes up really late, at around noon. So it would be best for us to leave at six in the morn' and return by ten."

Gregory slipped a tiny antique watch from his breast pocket and flicked the lid open. Absently, he checked the time. It was a quarter-past-six now, and Ariana had yet to arrive.

And then he saw her. She was hanging outside the window, slowly sliding down a rope. When she reached the bottom of the trellis, she hopped to the ground and skipped to his side.

Gregory gaped.

"Pardon my tardiness." Ariana gasped. "My brother is cleverer than I thought. It seems he predicted my sneak away and placed a spel—I mean, a special block on the staircase. So I braided his school ties into a rope to make my escape. Actually, it's kinda weird that he has so many."

"Blimey. Were you afraid of falling? And won't your brother get mad?"

"Yes, but as my brother likes to say, it was all for the greater good." Her eyes twinkled merrily as she spoke, but a toxic iciness lay in them, flitting in and out of sight like the poisonous and cyanic _Morpho Menelaus_.

* * *

The walk to the meadows was aided by an easy conversation that had begun on the topic of Albus' ties and ended, inexplicably, on Gregory's swearing.

"I can bloody well swear when I bloody well want," Gregory remarked, without real heat. "It's just that my Pa always does so and my Ma used to—before she died. What's the harm in it, besides?"

"It's not nice," Ariana persisted gently. "To swear in front of a lady. And I'm sorry for your loss," she added sincerely, with sorrow in her eyes.

'Ah,' he thought. He had always wondered where Mrs Dumbledore had gone. Now he knew.

Gregory faked a laugh, and the tension broke. "Y—You? A lady? Who climbed down her brother's ties this morning?"

Ariana huffed. "Do I look like a boy?"

"Well, no, but—"

"Please, Gregory," Ariana said slyly. "I mean, I wouldn't want to have to explain to my brother whom exactly I had picked up my sudden partiality to expletives from."

Gregory paled. "You wouldn't!"

"I might," she said, wringing her fingers with pleased uncertainty.

"Bloody hell. Fine."

"That's twenty knu—pence to the swear jar," Ariana said promptly and scooped out an empty butterfly jar from his pack.

Gregory rolled his eyes. "Since when was there a swear jar?"

"S—Since the Bank of Ariana declared it so," she stuttered.

"Alright, alright." Gregory loosened a hand from its hold on his backpack strap to dig into a trouser pocket. He counted out twenty pence and put the rest back in his pocket.

A lead-coloured coin with a thorny flower and an opulent crown etched on its surface tinkled into the jar.

"Thank you very much," said Ariana sweetly.

Gregory mock-scowled. "Cheeky. On another note, we've arrived."

* * *

The Graveyard Meadow in Godric's Hollow was a quaint, quiescent place in the morning. There was hardly any noise except for the shivering of orange September leaves and withering petals in the wind. Despite the drooping flowers, butterflies still weaved through the stalks, making frequent and tricky disappearing acts like magicians would.

It was a strange and lovely place.

"It's pretty," Ariana commented, suddenly wistful and quiet.

"Yeah."

"We should start," she said, but Gregory was already lifting out his butterfly net and jar.

"Here," he said, passing her a net and a jar. "I don't mean to be a prat—I mean, rude, but it's difficult for beginners to catch a butterfly in flight. You'd have better luck trying to catch one when it lands."

"Sure, sure, may we begin now?" Ariana asked with a hopeful air.

"Yeah…?" Gregory replied, equally hopeful.

"Brill'! And don't think I missed that. Ten pence to the swear jar, please."

Gregory swore.

"That's another ten," said Ariana.

* * *

Butterfly-catching was an art. His grandmother had said so, and she said that both his mother and his other distant ancestors had said so too.

Gregory didn't mean the aesthetic definition of art. He meant the other one, that was defined as a skill that can be honed to a perfection that can bring pleasure. The art of butterfly-catching was comparable to any other art in that you needed to practice it, and that you needed a deft hand.

When he was small, Gregory had lacked that practised swiftness. He was of the ham-handed sort. According to his grandmother, he had been the quintessential Gregory: more likely to rip the wings off a butterfly and turn it into caterpillar-like once more than catch it and admire it. It was a child's cruelty that he had long since grown out of when his pudgy hands had turned slender and his mind had changed.

It had been a sudden change, mused his father to him, once; it was as if your mind had either gone soft or sharpened.

Still, though he couldn't remember what incident had caused the change to happen—or rather, it was precisely because he couldn't remember—Gregory knew that something big had happened.

He only hoped that it wasn't something too terrible.

"Hey," Ariana called from the far side of the meadow. "Do you want to hear a story?"

"Sure."

"There's an old urban legend that says that Godric Gryffindor—the supposed 'wizard' whom Godric's Hollow was named after—died here. That's why it used to be called Courage's Graveyard before the Muggl—the mayor changed it."

"Oh. That's it?"

Ariana looked at him queerly, as if expecting more. "That's it."

"Bugger, it flew away!" Gregory exclaimed.

"Swear jar."

"It's interesting, though. The urban legend, I mean," he commented. "I moved here from Mould-On-The-Wold, England when I was six or seven—I think. My memory about that age is kinda spotty, but I don't think they had any urban legends there. Or at least, any that I remember."

* * *

"So, how many butterflies have you caught?" Ariana inquired with shy competitiveness.

"Five. As for you?"

"One."

"That's pretty good for a beginner," he assured and untwisted the cap of his butterfly jar.

Her blue eyes widened. "What are you doing?"

"Setting them free." There was a rush of red, green, and black as the butterflies in his jar flitted out to freedom.

"But why?" she pressed.

"Because it's the right thing to do. We catch butterflies not to keep them, but to appreciate them. You know, like art. You view them in a museum for a while, but you don't buy them for keeps. Same with the butterflies. Now, give your jar."

She hesitated.

"Ariana…."

"Here."

"Thanks."

The Common Blue butterfly crept up the jar to the rim and took flight.

As Ariana watched with greedy longing in her rheumy blue eyes, the blue butterfly vanished behind a tree and was never seen again.

* * *

A week later, he knocked on the door to the Dumbledore household. A redheaded man of about eighteen years opened the door—her brother, Albus—and Gregory ambled in.

Albus blinked.

"Oh, don't mind me," Gregory said impishly. "I only came because I was told there was going to be cake."

"Alright, mate," Albus said doubtfully and settled back into a red and gold armchair and returned to his book.

Arianna seemed too engrossed to notice Gregory's arrival, so he decided to creep up on her.

"Hello, Ariana," Gregory said from behind her shoulder, grinning softly. "What's that in front of you?"

She squeaked and leapt forward to cover it. "N—Nothing!"

But it was too late. He stilled.

Gregory paled. "Oh, Arianna."

He should have known.

A collection of butterfly corpses, neatly pinned to a corkboard, lay on the kitchen table: Red Admiral; Painted Lady; Speckle Wood; Common Blue; Peacock; Large White; Common Blue.

Her fingertips were dusted with the scales of a butterfly wing.

"What have you done?"

She remained as silent as the Graveyard Meadow.

"Ariana."

"You can't honestly expect me to be satisfied with just viewing them. I just wanted them for myself," she whispered, her voice raw with the shame. "They were—just. So pretty and free."

Gregory left without a word.

* * *

" _I_ was free," she wept, "until they ripped off my wings."

* * *

They did not speak again. Soon, winter came, and the butterflies went into hibernation. During that period of ice and snow, he stayed at home. He returned to the Graveyard Meadow only at the beginning of summer.

But as he approached the meadow, he heard sounds coming from the meadow. He paused and hid behind a tree.

"Ariana is in no state to be dragged along with you as you pursue your dreams!" a man said.

Curious, Gregory peeked out from behind the tree trunk. There were three men standing with Ariana. Each was brandishing, like a gun or a knife, a stick which had been, oddly enough, polished.

The man who had just spoken had a strong jaw and blond hair like Ariana. Her brother Aberforth, he guessed. The man opposite him with apple-red hair was Albus.

Beside Albus was a strangely handsome boy with blue eyes and blond hair that was styled in a similar way to Albus'. Grindelwald, he recognised; the satan Frederick had run away from, crying, just a month before.

Concerned, Gregory wondered what Ariana was doing with _him_.

"You don't understand! Once we subdue the Muggles, there _would_ be no need for Ariana to be hidden!" Grindelwald shouted furiously.

"And when would that come?" Aberforth replied scathingly. "Who would care for her in the meantime? If I recall, Albus, it was _you_ who insisted that I should finish my schooling while you take care of her. And you've done a mighty fine job of that so far, letting her romp around with that _Muggle boy, Gregory_ "—he spat the words—"who first broke her magic and then her heart."

Ariana flinched. "Aberforth, it wasn't like that!"

"Ariana, please go home, you're not supposed to be here. You're already past your three o'clock curfew," Aberforth said, exasperated.

"But—!"

Opposite him, Albus replied, stupefied, "Gregory? Who?"

" _Tarantallegra!_ " Aberforth roared and a bolt of light flew out of the stick, towards Albus, who deflected it with a flick of his own stick.

" _Ducklifors!"_ Albus said.

" _Cantis!"_ Aberforth shouted while dodging.

The light hit Grindelwald, and he sang, " _Finite!_ "

A chill crept down Gregory's spine, like a spider.

Grindelwald's eyes hardened into chips of arctic ice. " _Inflatus,_ " he said.

After that, multicoloured jets of light began zipping around with wild abandon, and the butterflies began to migrate en masse. As the light show dragged on, green jets of light, once sparse, began to dominate the field along with shouts of _Avada Kedavra_.

One of the green lights hit a Common Blue which had not had the sense to evacuate.

It stilled and drifted to the grass. Dead, he thought unconsciously.

That was how Ariana had gone out.

One moment she was begging for the trio to stop, the next, she had run into the fray, determined and brave even in Courage's Grave; then a green light hit her, and she fell over, her pretty blue dress fluttering in the breeze.

She was dead.

It was plainly shown on the horrified faces of the three youths, who each had a hand in her murder.

Her inert body was superimposed on a smaller one. And suddenly, Gregory remembered; the cold, summer day he almost killed her, and the day his mother died.

* * *

 _A girl, no older than six, was standing beyond the hedges of the Dumbledore house, making the roses bloom._

 _He and two other boys gathered around her. Yelling at her with childish joy to do it again. When she couldn't, they pounced and tried to make her._

 _She was so small and still, curled up in her blue dress as blood pooled around her._

 _A man in robes coming. A stick pointed at him._

"Obliviate."

* * *

 _A man holding a stick. Spittle flying, his mother crying, "DON'T HURT HIM!"_

" _HE ATTACKED MY DAUGHTER!" Stick waving, a light flashing._

 _His mother jumping in front of him. His mother dying._

 _Men in robes coming, dragging the madman away._

 _And then, once again—_

"Obliviate."

* * *

What a gathering of murderers on Courage's Grave, he thought, laughing uproariously. The greedy girl with a collection of butterfly corpses; the boy who had almost murdered her; and the three wrathful men who had murdered her on this cold Summer day.

"Bugger me," he whispered and giggled.

" _That's ten pence to the swear jar,"_ he imagined Ariana saying with a sweet smile.

From behind him: " _Obliviate."_

* * *

Gregory woke up crying.

The reason kept fluttering, just out his grasp, like one of those elusive, quicksilver Pygmy Blues.

In the end, he could only wonder why he felt so terribly bitter and blue all the livelong day.

 _'Oh well,'_ he thought.

Whatever it was, he was confident that he would forget it soon enough.


End file.
